


In the End

by Crux01



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:25:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5197358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crux01/pseuds/Crux01
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 5, episode 5........Peter Quinn.......dying......</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the End

He was dying for his country.

A valiant soldier giving up his life in the fight against his nation's enemies; ISIS, Pakistan, Russia...... in the end it did not matter which one was behind the trigger finger that sent the bullet into his gut; it was excruciatingly killing him regardless. He had always known it would end this way; wracked with pain in a dreary, lifeless hovel that stank of blood and piss, fear and shit; a cold icy fire burning through his veins as he shivered and bled out, his consciousness flickering like a feeble candle flame in a draught. 

There was no glory here. No help, no comfort, nothing except the compelling need to let it all go.

His fevered mind conjured up shimmering images; the clichéd flashing of his life before his eyes? Christ he really didn't need that!

He saw faces of people from long ago, lost in the haze of time, no, not lost but given up by him because they had no significance for him. He may have been from good Philadelphian stock, Harvard educated, a potential college basketball star if only he had grown taller, but he had never fitted in; too introverted to fully embrace the American Dream, and too bright not to be further isolated by his apparent inability to do so. He learnt quickly to hide behind a carefully constructed facade of calm confidence and carelessness. Seemingly secure in his own world of sharp, spiky cynicism, in reality he had been a frightened and forlorn boy longing for some unknown thing that was continually out of his reach. Sensing what he was missing, he fooled himself into believing he didn't want it anyway. Increasingly detached and removed for his classmates he dropped out of college, signed up for the Army in a vain attempt to find a place to belong and run away from the awkward failure of not being able to integrate into his own society.

No, he was not dying for his country because, in the end, his country wasn't worth dying for.

He was dying for the CIA. 

Sacrificing himself so that the organisation he had laboured for over most of his adult life would retain its secrets and would keep his colleagues safe. The Agency that had entrapped him as he dangled perilously on the edge of despair, disillusioned with the military life, confined by petty rules and mindless discipline, adrift and still searching for something to believe in, some anchor that could stabilise him.

He remembered his first meeting with Dar Adal, who had seen his inadequacies and weaknesses all too easily and ruthlessly exploited them, mercilessly ensnaring him, recruiting him to be 'his guy'. The old bastard had played on his insecurity and deep longing to be something, to do something that mattered, instilling a professional pride and a loyalty that, at the time, had felt like something genuine, something worthy. How could he have been so naive and stupid?

A momentary flare of hot anger flashed through him but was soon lost as it melted into the unforgiving piercing pain that dwelt now in every one of his screaming muscles like a living, writhing thing. He had no strength to feel anything more. He was simply a soldier and had known this was how it would end, had accepted it and indeed expected it as part of that bargain he had made with the Agency long ago. 

An involuntary groan escaped his dry lips as his fevered mind flashed forward, the acidic sharp smell of plum wine springing to his quivering nostrils.... a house....a shattered body shrouded with bloody gore..... a worn-out policeman, voice weary with exasperation and bewilderment. 'Have you ever done anything but made things worse?'

Dizziness threatened to overcome his beleaguered senses as a stream of images cascaded through his mind; a graphic catalogue of the dubious 'achievements' of his life. Faces of the murdered, lifeless death masks, the ghosts from his past, the people he had killed with no mercy, with no thought except how to get the deed done. Their mouths contorted into silent screams, their blood spewing forth and staining his pathetic soul irredeemably blacker than black.

No, he wasn't dying for the CIA because, in the end, the CIA wasn't worth dying for.

He was dying for himself.

A final release from the overwhelming despondency that stalked him, the cruel, unrelenting hunter that tracked him throughout his life and would never let him be free.

He was alone now. Vaguely he could sense the irrelevant German lawyer moving around the next room emitting panicked curses and the stench of uncontrollable fear. How he wished with all his heart that this new guy, who could not hope to understand any of it, would just fuck off and leave him to die.

He had chosen to be alone, his job had made it an imperative and he had come to rely on the safe haven that only complete reliance on his own ability could bring. Once he had made the decision, given up all thought of human intimacy, it had become a compelling requirement within him. He needed no one. He considered no one. And he deemed it to be a strength. He never believed in heroes and happy endings, so dying alone seemed somehow fitting, his last selfish act in a life riddled with them.

He pulled in a ragged breath, trying to slow his racing lungs, wishing it would be his final one but death still would not take him. In this, as in all things, he seemed destined to fail.

No, he wasn't dying for himself because, in the end, he wasn't worth dying for.

He was dying for her.

He had spent a lifetime building impenetrable walls to hide behind. Family, friends, lovers, even his own son, he had never let them get close enough, nobody could infiltrate his inner sanctum, nobody even got close........until her. 

She exploded into his life with the heat of the sun, dazzling him with her light, burning him with her intensity, forcing him to re-evaluate, compelling him to care. She had made him stop and see his downward spiral, made him witness his crimes, but more than that she had made him believe, however fleetingly, that he could be a better man. 

No one had touched him where she did.

And yet, very early on, he had known she would be the death of him that he would fail to live up to her expectation, he could not be the man she made him want to be. His finely-tuned survival instincts had sensed he should get away back to the twilight world he had existed in before she had pulled him into her gravitational orbit. He had even succeeded for a while but only because he had cut off all emotion, made himself into a killing machine and, even then, always, deep in the marrow of his bones, deep in his soul, he had known he could not deny her. She was his salvation and his doom.

For her he had to try, even though he knew he would fail. He was entranced by her siren call, and like a hopeless sailor, had always been bound to end here, dashed and lifeless on the rocks of desolation.

He tried to recall when he finally gave up, when he realised that he was not going to get through this, that the antibiotics she had sourced were too late, that the blood loss and the chemicals released from his own immune system to fight the infection would surely kill him. And through the murky mists of his unravelling consciousness he remembered that she had run her hand through his hair, in a gesture of goodbye that one would use on a favourite, faithful hound.

'We'll talk about it when I get back, OK?' she said and at that moment he had known; he would not see her again and his struggling heart had finally broken.

He gulped at the absurd sentiment of this thought, tried to shake his head in denial but his body betrayed him as it convulsed uncontrollably, shivers of cold running the length of his scorching spine. Suddenly his senses were incredibly acute; he tasted the harsh metallic tang of blood and felt beads of sweat meandering along the furrows of his brow to drip with a salty sting into his eyes. The noise of his own breathing rattling from his labouring lungs filled his head. The squalid, monochrome room lurched alarmingly in all directions before him as he blinked his eyes to try to regain his focus, his sanity. 

And above it all pain, purple and penetrating, took hold of his whole body pitilessly pulling every fibre of his being down, down into the bottomless abyss of agony.

Gut shot, beaten, broken. He was dying like a dog and he didn't care. What was there left to care about? 

He had done his best to make her safe, he could do only one thing more and he was resolved to do it.

Yes, he was dying for Carrie because, in the end, she was worth dying for.


End file.
